High-speed industrial doors, which are capable of being rolled up on a shaft or drum to open, have long been used in the storing and staging areas of commercial buildings such as factories and warehouses. Materials handling machinery, such as conveyors and lift trucks are commonly used to transport items to, from, and between storage areas and staging areas such as loading docks. In such applications, as well as others known in the art, the industrial doors are often required to open quickly, such as opening at a rate of approximately 48 inches per second up to 100 inches per second or greater. This speed enhances productivity, cost savings, and safety, especially where cold storage and distribution is involved. Additionally, specific environmental or security requirements may need door speed and sealing integrity to be maintained in either the storing or staging area or both, e.g., temperature, cleanliness, etc.
Today's high-speed industrial door assemblies include a pair of vertically oriented assemblies installed proximate the vertical sides of an opening of the passage and are sometimes called “side columns.” The side columns have structures which guide the flexible door panel during opening and closing. These “guides” provide surfaces which engage a vertical marginal edge portion of the moving door panel therein. The guides are located proximate the vertical sides of the passageway that includes an opening having a width. The guides do not extend into the width of the opening so as to maximize the clear path of travel for personnel and vehicles in the traverse of commercial traffic through the passage. The door panel, often including its accompanying parts, e.g., a relatively rigid bottom bar, guide retention means such as rollers, knobs, etc., is made wider than the width of the opening such that a marginal portion of the door panel on each side of the opening near the vertical side edges thereof, extends into and is thus guided or retained within the guides.
Even though the door panel is moved vertically at a relatively fast rate, there are times when the door panel—or a portion of the door assembly itself—is impacted by a vehicle and dislodged from at least one of the guides. The door assembly cannot operate properly until the displaced door panel is reconfigured to be within the door assembly's guides so as to be in its normal operating configuration.
Reconfiguring or “repairing” the door's guiding function after an impact has been the subject of the design of others including the applicants of this application. However, the prior art has only limited or no solutions for restoring or “repairing” of an automatic high speed roll up door when it is dislodged in a direction which places the panel inside of, or through, the opening of the passage. In this case, with a conventional roll-up door, the wider door panel will be pushed through the narrower opening distorting its normal shape so as to comply with the width of the opening of the passage. As a result, the door panel and its associated structures as well as the side columns and the wall portions constituting the opening, are more susceptible to damage both because of the dislodging and the gesticulations required to repair the door to its operational state. In addition, there are commercial losses due to time and productivity lost while the door is in disrepair. The repair from such a dislodgement is routinely accomplished through human operator effort, and is not automated. The door panel must be moved back to the other side of the opening before being realigned and reinserted within the guides. Returning the door panel to the door-assembly side of the opening can be difficult—perhaps even requiring disassembly of portions of the door assembly—and may incur additional time, and further expose the door panel to more damage.
It is known in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,141,043 and 5,319,015 to provide a “self-repairable” industrial door assembly having side uprights each including a slideway having a guide wall on either side of the plane of a door panel or curtain. Lateral portions of the curtain slide within the slideways and are adapted to escape from the slideways in the event of an abnormal or atypical transverse force. At least one of the slideways includes a movable wall element capable of temporarily deforming so as to form a path enabling the lateral portion of the curtain to pass from the outside to the inside of the slideway. Unfortunately, the operative reconfiguration of a displaced curtain from a high speed automatic roll up door that has been pushed through the opening remains unaddressed.
The present invention is provided to address these and other considerations.